We drove to San Antonio Saturday to celebrate Wife's birthday with her folks who cooked basically a thanksgiving feast with turkey, ham, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and so many other things. I decided I would nap on the way, and I woke just as we were driving into the neighborhood where my in-laws live. I noticed everything looked real clean, like maybe after a rain, but without people jogging or biking like they seem to do non-stop here in Austin, it also seemed a little post apocalyptic. I said to Wife nowadays you don't even see dogs running wild like we used to growing up.
Let me be clear, growing up I absolutely hated everyone who owned a dog and let them run and chase after people. I refused to walk home after school because there was a house two houses in with some sort of mix of greyhound and mutt. He would begin the barking. then on the other side of the street there was an old lady with a fenced yard, but had like four dogs that would bark from one end of the yard to the other if you walked by. Finally, across the street and over one from us was a tiny Chihuahua mutt mix that would bark like it was mad at the world. It was so stressful to get home. On the other side, we were probably three or four blocks from the library but there were a couple of houses with big dogs. They only got out occasionally, but they were big and scary with a low rumble of a RUFF!! I wish I could go and split these dog owners asses with a bootkick. These freaking owners didn't really care about their dogs, they would just let them terrorize the neighborhood.
I am not sure if this is a small town versus big town issue, but we can walk around our neighborhood and not see a dog and I love that. I guess it might still be a problem, my brother had to terminate a great big intimidating dog that had come onto his property and wouldn't leave a couple years ago. He was scared for his kid's safety and he screamed at it and it wouldn't leave so he took care of it.
I still remember breaking up with my first girlfriend in town which was past the library and having to walk home in 8th grade before I was allowed to drive alone, this was before cell phones, and I just remember thinking walk in the middle of the road, quietly and briskly, so as not to be noticed by the dogs. I got by, but my heart races thinking about that night. It was sometimes better during the summer when it was 105-107 degrees in the middle of the day to walk to the library because the dogs were smarter than us and wouldn't come out.
My mom always says we should get a dog for the boys, but really, dogs kind of suck. They pee and shit all over the place. If you have a carpet, your house is going to have the smell of dog pee. Mom has a beautiful and even well behaved dachshund and we almost bought one where she did, but a couple of weeks of Chubs hanging out at my Mom's when the school year started and he got over his want of a dog. Chubs had originally gone with Wife when she started her job three hours away. They were too much work for him.
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